Ainslie T. Embree: Why It’s Important To Know About India

[Ainslie T. Embree is professor emeritus at Columbia University. This essay is based on his presentation to the History Institute for Teachers on “Teaching India,” held in Chattanooga, March 11-12, 2006. The conference was sponsored by FPRI’s Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Asia Program, and the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Center, and made possible by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.]

Fifty years ago, when I began teaching American students
about India, I would probably have begun a lecture on why
it's important for Americans to know about India rather
defensively and apologetically. Acknowledging the lack of
interest at that time in India by the U.S. government,
military, business world, media, and even academia, I would
have argued that because of the greatness of its
contributions to civilization in art, literature, history,
and religion, India was worthy of sustained attention. That
is still true, but changed relations between India and the
United States have added a different dimension to the need
for knowledge about the nature of Indian society.

Although Yankee clippers continued to make forays to the
great ports of British India in the nineteenth century, and
indeed into the twentieth century, the only significant
American presence came from American church groups, which
built some excellent schools, hospitals, and colleges, but
these were on the periphery of Indian life. In the United
States, Indians and India were even more on the margins. In
the 1940s, however, interest in India increased because of
the reputation of Mahatma Gandhi in the churches and the
pacifist movement. Then came independence in 1947, with
partition of British India into India and Pakistan along
religious lines. This was accompanied by horrific riots in
both countries as Hindu and Muslims attacked each other,
providing an enduring image of a region torn by religious
strife. This was followed by the beginning of the bitter
estrangement between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, with
the United States endeavoring, without much success, to
follow a neutrality policy. This attempt ended, however, in
the 1950s, when the United States, in the search for allies
in the Cold War, gave military support to Pakistan, thereby
souring relations with India.

During this period, the U.S. saw Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, with his policy of non-alignment, as a friend of the
Soviet Union. Although the United States and India were not
overtly hostile, the governments, politicians, and the press
in both countries were sharply critical of each other's
policies, marking the beginning of a long estrangement.

By 1991, however, quite radical changes were beginning in
relationships between the two countries in the context of
the end of the Cold War, the beginning of globalization, and
the violent phenomena lumped together under the rubric of
"Islamic terrorism." The dramatic ending of Soviet
preeminence in international affairs ushered in more
openness on the part of Indian politicians and intellectuals
toward the United States. As for globalization, India had
during the 1990s moved from a controlled economy towards a
much freer market economy, accompanied by a lively interest
in foreign investment and in expanding American exports to
India. This was a move in a direction that successive
American administrations had long urged but over which they
had little leverage; the move was almost wholly dependent
upon Indian decisions and initiative. Successive Indian
administrations had long defined the uprisings in Kashmir as
Muslim terrorism, inspired and financed by Pakistan and
Afghanistan's Taliban. The Indian press also usually
attributed bombings in India itself to Pakistan-financed
groups. All of this encouraged more favorable views of the
United States.

Three widely hailed public events can serve as markers of
the changing climate of Indian opinion. One was the 2000
visit of President Clinton to India, where his extraordinary
popularity was evidenced by the enthusiastic reception he
received from the Parliament. Building on these warmer
relations, in July 2005 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
made a visit to the United States that was heralded in the
press and in speeches by the representatives of both
countries as a triumphal expression of the enduring
friendship that existed between "the world's two greatest
democracies." More tangible was the promise by President
Bush, according to accounts widely circulated in India, that
the United States "would help India become a major world
power in the twenty-first century."[1] It is hard to think
of any such promise having been made before by one nation to
another. The startling feature was the promise to supply
India with nuclear technology, defying not only the NPT,
which India has not signed, but also U.S. law, which forbids
the exportation of such technology. Politicians and the
media in both India and the United States began to speak of
the two countries as "natural partners," sharing democratic
and economic interests. Discussions were begun on provisions
for joint weapons production, cooperation in missile
defense, export of sensitive military technologies from the
United States to India, encouragement of U.S. investment in
India, and, most important, nuclear cooperation. All of this
would have been unthinkable even thirty years ago.

The third moment dramatizing the shift in Indo-U.S.
relations came in Spring 2006, when President Bush visited
Delhi. He was not invited to address Parliament, as previous
presidents had been, but an agreement was reached that moved
India and the United States to a new relationship by
promising that the United States would supply India nuclear
technology, which transfer was forbidden by U.S. law.
Proponents of the agreement argued that through nuclear
energy, India would be less dependent on oil supplies from
the Middle East; that it would become more prosperous, thus
becoming an immense market for American goods; and that a
stable India would provide stability to the area and lessen
the danger of an Indo-Pakistan conflict. An argument
frequently heard in the United States, but seldom in India,
is that by helping India become a world power, the United
States will gain a counterweight to China.

Given these prospects for Indo-U.S. relations, it is surely
in our own self-interest to know as much as can about
India's we embark on this momentous journey. A useful
starting point is understanding India's self-definition and
self-image. A succinct and authoritative statement is the
preamble to India's Constitution. The Constitution was not
imposed upon India by an outside force. It was made by a
freely elected Constituent Assembly and was the work of
Indian lawmakers, lawyers, and politicians. It was argued
point by point in public, and was subject daily to criticism
in the newspapers. It is the people's document. The preamble
is a remarkable statement flowing from, above all, India's
historical experience, as well as from the aspirations of
the Indian people as they embarked on what Prime Minister
Nehru famously called its "tryst with destiny," and,
finally, from the enormous tensions and dangers that existed
for the newly independent nation in 1947 and still exist.

The Preamble as adopted in 1949, with amendments made in
1976 (shown here in italics), reads as follows, with words
capitalized as in the official version of the document:

We, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to
constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of
thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote
among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the
individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of
November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO
OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

The words "unity," "sovereignty," "democracy," "socialism,"
"secular," and "the people" resonate with India's history
and aspirations. They are particularly important for our
understanding of India at present. While stated in the
Constitution as if they represented the agreed aspirations
of the Indian people, in fact, all of them have been
fiercely contested in the years since 1947, and are the
product of tensions woven into the fabric of Indian social
and political life. Importantly, the terms do not
necessarily have the same connotations in India as in
America. The people of both countries should have a clear
recognition that the two countries' conceptions do not
always coincide, despite.

The people. One notes that there is no mention of "God" or
"natural rights" or of any blessing by a sacerdotal
personage. Instead, "we, the people . . . give to ourselves
this constitution." It is a rejection the rights of kings
and rulers, of priests; of special classes. Indians often
express surprise that Americans open their legislative
sessions with a clergyman of one or another faith praying
for God's blessings on the proceedings. India's Constitution
makes clear that all authority flows from the people: there
is no higher power than the people. Furthermore, Americans
generally regard religion as a vaguely good thing; Indians
are aware how divisive religious commitments can be in a
society, undermining the values and aspirations noted in the
preamble.

Unity and integrity. Unity was in the original version;
integrity was added as an amendment in 1976 with the intent
of reinforcing the meaning of unity. The immediate
historical context was the increasing sense shared by Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi and some of her ministers that the
country was threatened by a variety of forces inimical to
its stability, including antagonism between religious
groups, which Indians refer to as "communalism." There were
also, she asserted, political forces of home-grown fascism,
arising from both rightwing Hindu groups and predatory
capitalism. "Hostile foreign powers"--usually unnamed, but
everyone knew the United States was meant--were said to pose
threats.

But the almost obsessive emphasis on unity has a deeper root
that Americans must understand in dealing with India. How
nations remember their past determines their present and
their future. The first modern histories of India were
written by the British and formed the both Indians and
foreigners' understanding of Indian history. At least five
emphases stand out in that version of India's history: (1)
the identification of Hinduism as defining the essential
nature of Indian civilization; (2) that the country's
political history is a record of political fragmentation
caused by internal and incessant internecine warfare; (3)
that antagonism between Hindus and Muslims is a permanent
feature of Indian social life; (4) that Indian history is
characterized by foreign invasion; and (5) that political
unity and freedom from communal strife had only occurred
when imposed by a strong ruler. The last and most successful
of invaders, according to this historiography, the British,
had imposed a unity India had never enjoyed before. This was
not just the view of British imperialists. President Teddy
Roosevelt at the beginning of the twentieth century stated,
"If British control were withdrawn from India, the whole
subcontinent would become a chaos of bloodshed and violence.
. . . The only beneficiaries among the natives would be the
lawless, the violent and the bloodthirsty."[2]

Democracy. Americans tend to speak of democracy as if it
were an ideological concept that all right-thinking people
accept, along with a belief in God. In Indian usage it seems
to imply acceptance of a system of laws and a legal
structures for people to change their leaders. While this
low-key understanding does not contemplate promoting
democracy abroad, it does give Indians a sense of
empowerment that the government belongs to them.

Socialism. Despite all the evidence that India is a
capitalist society, its constitutional definition as
socialist remains. The word's constitutional meaning has to
be sought in two other words in the preamble: "justice" and
"equality." Inequality and injustice were hallmarks of
social relationships, but humanitarianism and practical
common sense told the leaders of the new India that the
country could never be a democracy or a modern state unless
it did something to assuage to age-old evils of poverty and
social injustice. They also recognized that state planning
of an industrial economy was necessary. In this rush to
modernity, Gandhian ideals remained in humanitarian
commitments that united democracy and socialism in a quest
for justice and equality.

Secularism. Of all the words of the Preamble, the ideas
embodied in this one have been the most contested, not just
in intellectual debate, but in outbreaks of murderous
violence. The word was not in the original version of the
Constitution, having been added in 1976, but the ideas
associated with it had been part of political discourse all
through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The relevant
articles (25-28) in the Constitution declares that all
persons are "equally entitled to freedom of conscience and
the right to profess, practice and propagate religion." The
sticking point was granting the right to propagate one's
religion, understood as the right to proselytize. The idea
of conversion is repellent to many Hindus on the grounds
that it is socially destructive, breaking the bonds of
family solidarity and introducing ideas and values that
corrupt Indian civilization. Islam and Christianity, on the
other hand, both stress that propagation of the faith is an
essential command. The Constitution's insistence that the
government treat all religions as equal, favoring and
supporting none, was offensive to many Hindus, who pointed
out that Indian civilization--its art, literature,
architecture, philosophy, political thought--were all deeply
colored by indigenous roots. To stress the importance of
religions in modern India is not to say that Indians are
more religious than any other people, but that in declaring
India as a secular socialist democracy, the constitution
makers were struggling with a number of closely related
problems. One was to find unity in India's pluralistic and
fragmented society; another was awareness of the communal
riots that became increasingly common as India moved toward
independence and that were to merge into the horrors of
Muslim-Hindu riots that marked the partition of British
India into Pakistan and India. During the national movement
before independence, religion had become politicized, and
politics has often adopted the vocabulary if religion, most
notably in Mahatma Gandhi's great appeal and in the Muslim
League's demand for some form of an Islamic state.

Declaring India a secular state was an expression that
appealing to religious identity would cease to be a factor
in Indian politics, for, as Nehru put it, "the cardinal
doctrine of modern democratic practice is the separation of
the state from religion." As early as 1926, Nehru, who saw
religious ideologies as an impediment to India's progress,
had expressed the hope that the passage of time "would
scotch our so-called religion and secularize our
intelligentsia," lessening the appeal of religion.[3]

However much religious violence remains a factor in Indian
life, it is important for Americans to understand that
religiosity, which is so pronounced a feature of public life
in the United States and so often appealed to by American
politicians, has a sinister undertone of bigotry in Indian
national life. A useful reminder in current dealings with
India is George Washington's warning of the "horrors of
spiritual tyranny." Modern India has experienced such
horrors, and declaring itself a secular state was meant to
guard against them.

Sovereignty. The assertion of sovereignty in the preamble
and elsewhere in the Constitution has two major aspects, one
relating to external factors, the other to internal.
External sovereignty carries the idea of freedom from
intrusion by outside powers, which is of great historical
importance in India because of its past history. This was
demonstrated by the care that the prime minister took to
assure his people that in the new relations with the United
States there is no question of "succumbing to external
pressures with regard to foreign policy."[4] The move
towards the United States seemed a rejection of the foreign
policy India followed in the era after independence, which
was known as non-alignment or neutrality, a refusal for any
kind of alliances that would impinge upon India's
sovereignty. To the United States, this always seemed a
hypocritical policy, as during the Cold War India seemed to
be an active Soviet ally, but it probably served India's
national interests to keep the focus on India's internal
needs. Most observers would now agree that Pakistan, in
contrast, suffered from pursuing a policy of active military
alliance with the United States. Pakistanis, with
understandable chagrin, now see India being favored by the
United States in terms of nuclear technology while they are
ignored.

Sovereignty was more severely challenged internally than
externally because of serious uprisings rooted in demands
for self-determination. It was such a demand that brought
India its freedom, but when the various declarations of
rights by the UN implied that groups within a sovereign
nation had the right to self-determination--meaning, the
right of secession--India made a vigorous protest that such
rights applied only to peoples under foreign domination. "To
make it applicable to an existing nation," the Indian
delegate to the UN declared, "would undermine the very
essence of its integrity."[5] For this reason, the Indian
government has been involved in three bitter struggles by
groups demanding self-determination: in Nagaland in the
northeast India, in Kashmir in the northwest, and in Panjab
below Kashmir. In all three provinces, the leaders of
militant uprisings based their demands for autonomy on
common historical experience, shared history, territorial
contiguity, language, and religion, all of which they
alleged were threatened by oppressive rule of the government
of India, which had no legitimate claim to the area. The
uprising in Panjab was ended, but with much violence, while
in Nagaland, sporadic resistance continues and in Kashmir
successive attempts at negotiating a peaceful settlement
have broken down through mutual mistrust.

These uprisings have special relevance for the U.S.
relation-ship with India because the Indian government sees
the long and violent confrontation with the militant forces
in Kashmir as linked with the larger U.S.-led war on terror.
The United States also shares strategic interests with
India, and possibly the opening of the Indian markets to
American business will benefit both sides. India's energy
needs are great, and nuclear technology may help it meet
these demands. But beyond what is good for India and the
United States looms the darker question of whether the
nuclear deal, which weakens the already fragile
international containment of nuclear proliferation, is good
for the world. Many people, including in the United States,
see the United States' contributing to advances in Indian
nuclear technology as a giant step towards a world where
more and more nations are armed with WMD. In the long run,
however, a more robust U.S.-Indian relationship could mean
not just a more prosperous India, but a United States more
constrained in its use of power for preemptive strikes
against weaker nations.

Long ago two Americans looked at the possibility of forming
a new U.S.-India relationship and imagined good coming from
it. One was the Rev. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale
University (then Yale College), who in a remarkable address
in 1783 entitled "The United States Elevated to Glory and
Honor" insisted that the new union of states would became a
great nation, because, among other reasons, navigation and
commerce would carry the new American flag "around the globe
itself, and display the thirteen stripes and new
constellation at Bengal and Canton, on the Indus and the
Ganges, on the Whang-ho and the Yangste-Kiang." Our ships
would bring back not just material goods, but also "the
wisdom and literature of the East." In America this wisdom
would be digested and carried to its highest perfection, and
then, refined and transformed, their wisdom and ours would
"reblaze back from America to Europe, Asia, and Africa and
illumine the world with truth and liberty."[6] That was
truly a vision of how the Indo-American relationship might
change the world.

Walt Whitman in his famous, enigmatic poem saw both danger
and new possibilities in a passage to India:

Passage to more than India! . . .
Sail forth! Steer for the deep waters only! . . .
For we are bound where mariner has yet not dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all . . .
O daring joy, but safe! O farther, farther, farther sail! [7]